Give HSR the extra wheels it deserves

Let's stop starving the HSR and start using public transit to improve our local economy, reduce air pollution, fight global climate change and help Hamiltonians cope with rapidly rising fuel prices.

By Don McLean, Last Updated Wednesday, November 28, 2007

(Originally published in the Hamilton Spectator on November 20, 2007)

Let's stop starving the HSR and start using public transit to improve our local economy, reduce air pollution, fight global climate change and help Hamiltonians cope with rapidly rising fuel prices.

Beginning in the early 1990s, city councils systematically slashed HSR funding. Between 1994 and 2000, the HSR budget was cut by almost 40 per cent. Absolute spending, not considering inflation, fell from $57 million to $46 million six years later.

That budget butchery has never been repaired. It took until 2006 for the HSR budget to crawl back past the $57 million spent 12 years earlier -- but that's in 2006 dollars, not 1994 dollars. This year the HSR's real budget is still nearly $12 million less than it was in 1994.

But that hasn't meant lower bus fares. On the contrary, they've jumped 80 per cent -- from $1.25 in 1994 to $2.25 a ride today, while HSR service hours have actually declined by 15 per cent.

Just bringing the HSR back to its previous level of funding would overcome embarrassing problems like the overcrowding that frequently leaves willing riders watching packed buses go by, too full to pick them up. And it would allow for the first real service expansion in decades.

Transportation is the biggest single source of air pollution for Hamiltonians and accounts for nearly half of our personal carbon emissions. Improving public transit is an obvious way for city governments to tackle both these very serious problems.

A better HSR will also bring more shoppers downtown and help local businesses secure and keep employees -- something that the local chamber of commerce fully understands and has repeatedly stressed.

Better bus service is a good way to reduce the effects that poverty and low wages have on far too many Hamiltonians. One out of every six households in our city don't have a vehicle. That number will rise if the cost of gasoline keeps climbing at the pace of the past few years.

So why has the HSR been starved for so long?

The initial slashing was obviously intentional. More recently, councillors have found raising fares an easy way to avoid using taxes for transit. When the police budget rises 5 per cent each year, councillors are unwilling to say no, even when they can't stomach overall tax hikes of much more than 3 per cent. So something else gets squeezed, often transit.

Along with increasing bus fares, the council has found an extra pot to steal from -- the gas tax monies being provided by both federal and provincial governments. This cash bonanza --currently more than $15 million a year -- is supposed to be used to improve public transit. But most is being used to continue the council policy of never raising the transit portion of taxes.

This is explained as "avoiding fare increases." The game goes like this: Normal cost increases in the HSR are labelled a "budget pressure" which we're told will force a fare hike. The public protests and council "backs down" and takes money from the provincial gas tax "to avoid a fare increase." This has happened three times in the last five years.

Other gas tax monies have been used to buy replacement buses (instead of paying for these out of local taxes) and to comply with the human rights commission ruling that forced the city to end discrimination against DARTS users.

Gas tax money was supposed to expand transit. In Kitchener-Waterloo and York Region it has helped boost ridership by more than 10 per cent in a single year while HSR struggles to achieve a 1 per cent increase.

There's another reason for the refusal to use taxes to cover normal inflationary costs of transit. We have six different HSR tax rates in Hamilton -- strongly influenced by suburban councillors.

Transit taxes are calculated entirely on the basis of the pre-amalgamation boundaries. In fact, residents of the former city -- the lowest-income part of Hamilton -- are currently paying 90 cents of every tax dollar collected for the HSR. Such a bizarre transit tax system exists nowhere else in Ontario.

The HSR tax rate in old Hamilton is five times the rate in the former town of Ancaster, four and a half times the rate in Dundas, and three times the rate in Stoney Creek. Flamborough residents actually don't pay any taxes toward the HSR, and neither do most of the people living in Glanbrook.

That's why there is no HSR service in Flamborough, not even in the fast-growing Waterdown area. There's precious little for Glanbrook residents and few buses in Ancaster, Dundas and Stoney Creek. Improving transit service will mean higher taxes for those residents, and suburban councillors have not been willing to go there.

It would be easy to blame councillors, but that's not entirely fair either. They believe that they are doing what their constituents want. So a big part of improving transit in our city requires us to tell them otherwise.

Climate change affects us all. So does air pollution. And rising fuel prices are making transit a better and better option -- even for those determined to continue living in their cars. The more people who take the bus, the more road space will be left for those who don't.

Improving the HSR, and keeping it affordable, benefits everyone.